The man with the blue thumb

Horticulturist Adam Schwerner grows art where once there was only green space

October 06, 2002|By Nancy Drew. Special to the Tribune.

In case you haven't noticed, there are blue trees in Grant Park--15 of them to be precise. Leafless and painted a deep blue, the trees stand like an orchard plucked from the pages of a children's storybook.

The cobalt-colored crab apples are part of a horticultural art piece called the "Blue Garden," in the park's South President's Court at the corner of Columbus Drive and Congress Parkway. Designed by Adam Schwerner, director of horticulture for Chicago's Department of Natural Resources, the "Blue Garden" has delighted and puzzled visitors to Grant Park since its installation in June.

One woman motorist, says Sloane Nystrom, who works with Schwerner as deputy director of horticulture, was so distracted by the blue grove as she turned right onto Congress that she bumped into the car in front of her. The other driver acknowledged that she too had paused to stare. "After exchanging phone numbers, they decided one of them would contact the park district to find out about the trees, and then call the other."

The trees have generated hundreds of calls to the Park District. "What cultivar is that tree?" "Where can I buy one?" were among the most frequent queries, says Nystrom. "I had to explain to them that they were dead trees covered in paint from Home Depot."

Taken from another garden where they had been girdled by rabbits fond of their bark,

"the trees are actually enjoying a second life," Schwerner says.

Since 1996, when he departed his position as foreman of the New York Botanical Garden's conservatory, Schwerner has been bent on pushing the aesthetic, horticultural and botanic envelope of Chicago gardening. Hired initially to bring Lincoln Park and Garfield Park Conservatories "to the top of the class," the 41-year-old Schwerner took over as the city's head horticulturist two years ago. In that capacity, he oversees the floral contract for some 150 annual gardens for the Chicago Park District.

Restless, energetic, and committed to replacing the institutional with the personal in public green spaces, his goal, he says, "is to make each garden its own rich experience."

Schwerner is bored silly by the "cookie-cutter" gardens found in many American parks--flower beds he describes as "a line of cannas, surrounded by a line of yellow marigolds, surrounded by a line of red salvias, surrounded by a line of white nicotianas."

Last year, when he and Nystrom redesigned all the gardens in their care, Schwerner banned "gas-station" red salvias and any large-flowered yellow or orange marigolds from his design palette. "Not allowed," he says emphatically. "Period."

"Cookie-cutter" is not a term that pops to mind when one visits the "Blue Garden." The high-gloss trees are provocative, capturing one's attention first and demanding a response. But the "Blue Garden" is more than 15 tree skeletons. The exuberant beds making up the rectangular border of the garden reveal Schwerner's pleasure in throwing together unlikely bedfellows. Agave americana, the giant century plant typically found in the deserts of Mexico, cohabits with blue oat grass (Helictotrichon sempervirens) a low mounding plant that's hardy to -20 degrees, and thistlelike sea holly (Eryngium) that usually grows seaside in the sand. Blue flowers and blue-green foliage thematically unite an array of plants, among them the spiky succulent blue chalksticks (Senecio serpens), blue spruce and striped blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium striatum). But red and white blossoms abound, too, amid a sea of silver foliage.

"More than color, the "Blue Garden" is about form and texture," says its designer. Silver-leaved plants including fuzzy plectranthus, lamb's ear (stachys) and kalanchoe, and the long spiky leaves of agave and rounded prickly pear, add variety and architecture to the tapestry. For fragrance, he has included parsley, dill and rosemary, "plants that get segregated too often in herb plots," he says. Scattered throughout the beds, cobalt blue ceramic pots and spheres reiterate the tree color.

Schwerner talks of creating plant communities united "by texture, color, growth habit or origin," and he peppers his conversation with Latin plant names. But, he adds, "You don't need to know the names of the plants to enjoy the garden. If someone who is not a trained artist goes to the Art Institute and sees a Picasso, they can see there's something integral and rich there, well thought through. I think people have the same comprehension of gardens when they're done well."

Schwerner cites artist Dale Chihuly's glass sculptures currently scattered throughout the Garfield Park Conservatory as an example of how manmade artifacts introduced into a garden can create new meanings and enliven and elevate one's experience of it. Too often, he points out, conservatories focus exclusively on identifying plants.